1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to engine assembly techniques and, more particularly, toward devices and methods for easing installation of a belt around engine pulleys.
2. Description of Related Art
During the assembly of automobile engines, it is necessary to wrap one or more belts around the engine pulleys. Such pulleys include a drive pulley, one or more driven pulleys, and idler pulleys. One or more of the idler pulleys is a tensioning pulley that is adjustable to maintain the belt at a predetermined tension, so as to reduce belt slippage and wear. However, during a belt installation process, the tension placed on the belt by the tensioning assembly makes it difficult or impossible to wrap the belt around the pulleys. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce or relieve the belt tension in order to permit the belt to be wrapped around the pulley.
The belt tensioning devices typically include a spring-biased piston that is disposed within a cylinder. With this arrangement, the cylinder is secured to a pulley mounting plate, while the free end of the piston is secured to a fixed support on the engine. The cylinder and piston are urged away from each other by the spring, and the pulley mounting plate and the pulley disposed thereon are moved, with the cylinder, away from the piston fixed support, so as to place tension on the belt that is disposed around the engine pulley.
However, to permit the belt to be placed around the pulleys, the belt tensioning device must be compressed or otherwise de-activated. When the belt tensioning device is compressed, the associated idler pulley may be moved so as to permit the belt to be placed therearound. Thereafter, the belt tensioning device may be released to return the idler pulley to its normal position and place the desired tension on the belt.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to manually compress or deactivate the belt tensioning device. In the past, compression clips have been used to hold the belt tensioning device in a collapsed or deactivated condition, but such compression clips are not useful in all applications. Also, it is known to use a lever to force the idler pulley mounting bracket to rotate against the spring bias of the belt tensioning device, and thereby move the idler tensioning pulley into a position to permit the belt to be placed therearound. Unfortunately, moving the bracket in this way requires a lot of force, and is a difficult operation for the belt installer. Furthermore, the installer will have to hold the lever with one hand while positioning the belt with the other hand, which is awkward at best.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art for a device and method for releasing or compressing a belt tensioning device so as to ease installation of a belt around the engine pulleys.